Chat with Chad
The latest news and perspective from the Director of Urban Homeworks
Free to Dream
We all aspire toward dreams that we have for our lives, but if we don’t have a place to lay our head, food or some other basic need, dreams become quickly eroded. Urban Homeworks continues to work hard to help meet the basic need for stable, dignified homes for our neighbors who are looking for long-term stability. We are fortunate to have received federal stimulus dollars (Neighborhood Stabilization Program), leveraged by multiple other sources to help achieve that aim.
Our strategy has been to use these funds as efficiently and effectively as possible while benefiting local businesses and individuals in the production of high quality homes. With this attitude of effective “capital absorption,” we aim to compound the triple+ “bottom line” of these investments by achieving high local, minority contracting and utilization rates, high construction skills/career training participation, and engaging volunteers from across the broader community. These ingredients are coming alongside the assets already present in our neighborhood to help provide a redemptive process that produces a quality home, a stronger neighborhood and a more robust region.
Strong people with stable places. Shauntina represents both. Shauntina is an emerging leader in her neighborhood who has used Urban Homeworks as a tool toward the achievement of her goals and dreams. Within her is the expression of Hope that we walk alongside each other to perpetuate. We are not on this road alone. YOU are helping to make that happen. Thank you for being on this journey with us.
Inward Recovery
Recovery kinda forces you to take a hard look inward as well as outward. I’ve been thinking a lot more about the inward recovery that we, the Urban Homeworks team, has been experiencing since the storm. To steal Stephen Covey’s metaphor, it feels like a bank account. When we went to work on May 23, 2011, we had higher emotional and relational deposits with each other as a staff, which was part of the reason we could engage with the community at the level we did with the effect we did. There is “cause and effect” to our response, however, and in this case the effect has been withdrawals in the team’s emotional bank account. I don’t feel like we are anywhere near to “bouncing checks” with each other. Our “account balance” is still relatively high, but we are committed over the near term to invest in each other in new and more focused ways while enhancing our work and presence in the community by perpetuating the hope both inwardly and outwardly. Thank you for walking and praying with us through this past year.
The Recovery Continues
As the trees are cleaned up and as more and more tarps are being turned into shingles following the May 22nd tornado, the recovery is gaining ground. We are continually grateful for your help and support as we work with our neighbors and friends to recover from this storm…and beyond.
“Recovery” is an interesting thing. Jesus talks about the “recovery of sight to the blind” in Luke 4 where he proclaims his manifesto. I have good friends who are in “recovery” from an addiction. One “recovers” from a surgery or illness. The efforts post-tornado are described as a “recovery” from the storm. In each of these, there is a thread of continuity; none is instantaneous and none is done alone.
I’ll tell you this: my recovery has been a slow, painstaking process with setbacks and challenges and some fantastic people walking with me through it all…one day, one hour, one moment at a time.
Before the storm, we were working hard on the recovery from another “storm.” The foreclosure crisis rendered a whole bunch of buildings vacant and deteriorating while sucking a whole bunch of capital out of our community. We picked up a number of homes and small rental buildings and started the recovery effort of putting them back together and restoring the relationships among the people who live in them. The foreclosure “recovery” smacks of the recovery above—one nail, one home, one person, one family, one relationship at a time.
The work of Urban Homeworks is one of recovery. We are working toward a more healed and whole life for me, for you, and for the cities, towns, and countrysides in which we live. Thank you for being a part of our story, for encouraging and making recovery happen.
